USA Today: Bootcamp opens the door for an exodus from Windows.

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Bootcamp's release just over a week ago was cheered by analysts, stockholders, and Mac users alike. A little over a week later and right on cue come the doomsayers. A recent commentary piece by Andrew Kantor in USA Today predicts that Steve's new strategy is the beginning of the end for Mac users and outlines several reasons why Windows on Mac hardware could be a Very Bad Idea.

To Kantor, it largely seems to come down to a matter of economics. As long as the low-end PCs cost less than a Mac (and the additional purchase of XP), why pony up the extra cash to get a Mac that will do a PC's work? A couple considerations are valid: two operating systems means extra support staff for the IT department, and as long as there are hurdles to reading/writing across the Mac/Windows partitions, virtualization software starts to look very appealing.

Still, most of this is geared towards businesses, who would be foolish to make any major hardware/software purchases that hinged heavily on a product that (say it with me folks) is still in beta. Once Bootcamp is in a final version, though, it has the potential to offer businesses a nice bridge. Software and equipment changes are major headaches that most companies face from time to time as part of updating their infrastructure. For any business that might have considered switching to Macs, having the option to make the transition slowly gives a nice safety net.

Looking at individual users, I'm a bit more baffled by USA Today's conclusions. Apple certainly isn't forcing its 3 percent market share to use a Mac. Presumably, we use OS X because we have found reasons to prefer it to Windows. We are not likely to be "deprogrammed" by putting Windows on our machines. Most of us are fairly well aware that there is something else out there in use by the other 97, percent and we may even at times be using that something else. The "switch Mac users to Windows" ship has sailed. But for all the people on the fence, those who know about Macs, those who read about Macs, those who wonder about Macs, Bootcamp is an open door. Like every other product out there, it will definitely meet the needs of some, even though it will never meet the needs of all.

Yes, the times, they are a' changin'. But (once again!) the end is nowhere in sight.